


Thoughts Of You Consume

by ForeverRed



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel/Demon Relationship, Brother-Sister Relationships, Character Study, No Incest, Platonic Female/Male Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:48:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26039716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForeverRed/pseuds/ForeverRed
Summary: Jonathan grew up with a demon mother who burned him instead of nurtured, a father who left him behind. His sister was meant to be his princess. She had been meant to to free him from his tower. But what if her saving him was different than they had dreamed as kids?
Relationships: Clary Fray & Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern | Sebastian Verlac, Clary Fray/Jace Wayland, Clary Fray/Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern | Sebastian Verlac
Kudos: 22





	Thoughts Of You Consume

**Author's Note:**

> This story follows closely with the Shadowhunters tv show plot mixed in with a bit of Mortal Instruments series, but eventually diverges. Title is from Ruelle's War of Hearts. More notes at the end.

Jonathan hadn’t meant to…become so enthralled. Years ago, when Mother had mentioned Clarissa Morgenstern, he had grasped on to that name with hope. Not only because it was the first non-demonic name that he had heard in years. But when he slept, he had dreams. Dreams of himself standing at his window, his fists punching the glass over and over again in his desperation to get free. But he always noticed a small red head climbing up the side of the tower, her little face set with grim determination. And he would begin to scream for her, for his princess, to come and save him. She would nearly reach his window each time, before the wind would pick up. It would yank at her hair and her clothes, puling at her with greedy fingers until she could no longer hold on and she would fall into darkness. He would cry afterwards, at first loud wracking sobs that would fade into silence. His princess tried so hard, but she always failed. Even when it mattered most.

When he first saw her, as she called herself Clary Fairchild, his breath was stolen. He had known about Clarissa since Mother had first mentioned her, but there had been little word on her since. He had been careful to not say anything about her, but he had clung on to that memory. He never realized, never knew that the red headed child climbing to his window all those year ago had been her. Clarissa. His sister. He hadn’t seen her in so long. One day, the dreams of thr little red headed girl had just stopped. He never knew who she was. But when she was standing in front of him, he just knew. Jonathan knew that it was her, his princess and he couldn’t breathe. To see her, but for her not to see him, just like his entire childhood…. it hurt. He wanted so desperately for her to see him.

He hadn’t meant to kiss her, after all those things that he had said earlier. About her father, about _himself_ as her brother, her family. He had pushed her to embrace the pain so she could use her abilities. But he had felt his own heart rip open at the sight of her heartbreak. He just needed her to know, wanted her to know, that he was there for her. She had looked at him with pity afterwards, pity lined with the pain of her own lost love, and he wanted to take that moment back. When she walked away, her shoulder grazing his lightly, the regret ate him inside.

When she had looked upon his true face, his burnt and mauled face, it hadn’t been one filled with disgust. There had been some fear, of course because he had just attacked her Jace. But she had looked at him with light and hope, with the desperation to have him at her side. Family. Family she had called him. But her Jace, the son that he had never been, ruined that. Ripping Clarissa away from him once again.

Clarissa. She was smart, smarter than anyone gave her credit for. She suspected. And then she saw. She saw through his façade and attacked. Each blow from her fists had hit his heart like a beating drum. When she stabbed him, she had taken a piece of his heart. Clarissa. She looked at him with such anger, such betrayal. Such disgust. Please…love me as I love you.

Her Jace. Valentine’s Jonathan. The angel of the son to wipe the memory of the demon. The one who always replaced him. In his father’s heart, in his sister’s heart. He hated him, hated him so much. Jonathan had never understood why her Jace was so special, why he was loved in such a way that he couldn’t understand. They had the same father, blood or not. Why did he get to know light and love and kindness and not he? Why did Mother show her love by burning away his flesh and ruining his face? Why? The question rang in his head as he fell into the water. As he called for Mother. As he exhaled one last time seeing Clarissa’s face when she still _liked_ him. Why?

She was there, pale and shaking, but there. In the apartment Mother had left behind when she was banished. Her skin carved with the rune that had brought breath into his lungs and his heart pounding against his ribs as he looked at her. She looked at him in fear, in disgust. And as she flinched from his touch, he knew. She didn’t love him. Nor did she like him. She was afraid of him. But it must’ve been Mother, or Father, or both that had planted the seed of distrust into her. And she ran, into the blizzard that howled all around them. He could feel the pain of cold, the desperation that burned her throat as she breathed, and as she fell, he stumbled. But he refused to lie down in the snow when she needed someone to save her. She hadn’t been able to as a princess, but she had only been a mundane girl. He was stronger, and he would save her.

She stabbed him in the soft part of his jaw, the blade driving through to the upper part of his mouth and into his nose. He gasped through the rapid swelling of blood. He fell, as did she, he could see her eyes rapidly realizing what the rune carved on their chests meant. He healed them both, and saw her look at him with even more fear. Mother dear, you gave me the gift of life, but stole away the opportunity to live.

She ran away. Perhaps not in the actual action, but stabbing herself in the leg and forcing him to run, she was essentially doing the same thing. She had chosen her Jace over him. She had smiled and looked at him with trust, but in the end it had been a lie. Agony ripped through his chest in a way that Mother’s burning hands could never come close too. He choked on his sobs, the tears were so thick that he was choking on them. Clarissa. Why? Why am I never good enough for you?

When she lost control, when the rage engulfed her, he felt the opposite. When she was punching the other Shadowhunter, he stumbled and clutched at his chest as Clarissa's supressed heartache launched through. As she made love to her Jace, he felt enough rage to set the world on fire. When she placed her hand in the fire, he howled as he felt the flames as if it were the first time. When her Jace broke her out of the trance, Jonathan hissed and felt his eyes _throb_ as they switched to demonic black. Each time he would feel closer to her. And her to him. She could feel his love. And he could feel understanding from her.

He was bound in chains and she stood before him, but the fear was no longer in her eyes. There was determination, mixed with conflict. She didn’t know what to feel, and he loved her harder. Desperately. To make her understand. To remember the dreams. He saw when she did, he saw her expression change. But she still walked away. Even as he howled her name. She was leaving him. His princess was walking away, she wasn’t falling because of the wind. She had let go.

She had freed him. She explored Paris and the Czech Republic with him, holding his hand. Clarissa had made him hot chocolate. She did it with a smile, slightly crooked in mischief. He knew that it was because of Mother’s rune, that it was what was making her change in this drastic way. He missed his Clarissa full of light, but he would take this one. It wouldn’t be the same but hopefully she would grow to love him enough that the rune wouldn’t matter. Her Jace tried to come in between them again, but this time she chose Jonathan. But when he tried to kiss her to thank her, she backed away. His knees threatened to buckle under the pain and fear of her leaving him but she grabbed his hands. She told him that they were brother and sister. Kissing was not what brothers and sisters did. He explained he didn’t understand, didn’t know. Mother kissed him. Mother did other things. He thought it was normal. Clarissa held his hand as he realized painfully that it wasn’t.

Her Jace bound him before racing off into the forest towards Clarissa, and Jonathan couldn’t do a single thing about it. He was bound and trapped, and when her Jace stabbed their rune, he screamed as she did. The pain, it felt as though his very soul was being ripped from his person. He cried for Clary, Clary because she preferred that to Clarissa. She screamed for him. But the rune was severed with a snap, and with it came a rush of power that he had never felt before. The rune had bound him. Without it, power swelled through his veins. There was the pain in his heart that came with his separation from his dear sister, and the physical pain from the wings that emerged from his back, the muscles that hardened into marble, and the bones that thickened into metal. He smiled as the black haired Shadowhunter guarding him crumbled in fear in front of him. He was about to fly away, to be free as he was meant to be, when he heard Clary’s voice.

“Big brother, please,” she was whispering. “Don’t leave me. Take me with you.”

He flew to her as she kicked her Jace away, he grabbed her hand and she grabbed his. They lifted into the air, with her arms wrapping around his waist. And he could feel it, the power of the darkness coursing through his veins, strengthened by the love of his sister. Clary. You chose me.

She stood beside him as he transformed, becoming something more than a mundane, more than a Shadowhunter with demon blood, something akin to a god. Clary kept guard to make sure that no one would harm him. Clary, his Clary, whispered stories about her childhood, her memories, her former friends, her former life. Occasionally she cried as she remember her Simon, or her Jace, or even an Isabelle, Magnus, or Alec. She cried, but she would straighten her spine as say, “They’ll kill you as soon as they get the chance. You didn’t have my mom or Luke to look after you. To hold you when you were afraid, to love you even at your darkest. To smile when you were happy, to encourage when you were struggling. You didn't have Simon to back you up even when you were lost. Or Jace or Izzy or Magnus to trust in you when you made a decision. You didn't have me. You deserve a chance.”

She played with his hair as he emerged from the cocoon, crooning about his new white hair. She wouldn’t let him use the sword of legends; Morning Star, instead putting it somewhere that he would only find if she were dead. He wanted to test his powers and she pushed him towards the Seelie Queen. For the Queen had tried to trick him and she had tricked Clary and her friends once before. The Queen was bound by truth but twisted it so that it was a lie. She had no loyalty, and wanted the destruction of everything Clary had fought for. And Jonathan was helpless to Clary's want of revenge. Clary’s own abilities had grown stronger with the destruction of their rune, she was not a god, but she was now closer to one of the angels than the mundanes that she had lived among. She held a light within her that was unmatched, just as his darkness. She hid herself away as he pretended to make peace with the Queen. And then he killed the Seelie Queen. Drained her of her very long life as if it were nothing. Even as she begged and adopted a face that was similar to Clary's in an attempt to be spared. He laughed. And behind him, Clary killed the fae knights who wanted to execute their revenge. 

Her friends found them. They tried to kill Jonathan, but also Clary. Clary had told him earlier how one more rune would wipe away anything she had become. The memories that had brought her into the Shadow World, to her Jace, eventually to his side. In his fear, Jonathan had forbidden her from creating any more runes, though he had not been strong enough to forbid her from his side. Clary, his strong and beautiful Clary, stared down at her friends that wanted to kill her brother. She sobbed, great broken heaves of agony that made Jonathan glad they were no longer bound by a rune where he could feel it. She loved them, but they could not love her. Not anymore. Not after she had chosen to help Jonathan, to support him. They could not see past the demon blood in his veins, despite the fact that her Simon had the same. Her Simon spit his distaste of her brother, knowing very well that he himself would not be alive if not for the venom and the blood that had transformed him into one of the Night Children. The hypocrisy of a vampire looking down upon a demon. Only Clary beside him kept Jonathan from ripping them apart.

Clary sobbed, and Clary drew. She wrapped her arms tight around Jonathan and continued to cry as pain lashed through both of them like whip. “Clary,” he said fearfully, because was she killing him? “Clary, you’re hurting me.”

He could see his black wings at the edges of his vision, and he could see her white wings that had emerged. Then there was white flames before there was darkness. When his eyes opened next, he was in the fiery planes of a fractured hell. Edom. In the ruined castle of Mother. She was dead, thanks to the Shadowhunter whose veins had been set alight by heavenly fire. Edom had been destroyed but when Clary brought them back here, she had also given them a portion of the fragmented world. Her runes were gone, as was her memory. A consequence the angels had bestowed upon her last rune. Jonathan looked after her, helped her build somewhat of a life in their own little world. Trying to make the life as normal as could be when you were a citizen in hell. The few remaining demons bowed to Jonathan, and tolerated Clary. And when the runes faded into red before darkening into black, her eyes looking into his with love. Love from the years that he had looked after her, and the time before when she had chosen him over her Jace, he knew that things would be okay.

Jonathan and Clary sat in their thrones, waiting until the time was right. It would be many years before either of them would step foot in the mundane world again. Her Simon would still be alive, as well as her Magnus, and the years that had separated them all had been so many that they forgot about the pain and embraced her instead. For they saw what she had done was what she believed in, she had helped Jonathan. He would always have the demon blood, but he was also part Nephilim, part human. He just never had the opportunity to know what it was.

Clary cried at the graves of her former lover and friends, but she stood and looked amongst the stars and the moon and held Jonathan’s hand. “Not everything is black and white,” she said, “There is more gray than anything and we are part of that gray. It hurt, and the consequences will always be there, but if that means that eventually we can all live in peace. It is worth it.”

“What about good and evil?” he asked, his heart hammering for the first time in a long time as he began to fear her answer.

“Good and evil is a matter of perspective,” Clary smiled, bringing a light that her sunlight rune could never, but tinged with a darkness that echoed his own soul. “We both learned that the hard way.”

Their wings, his black and her white, spread out across the space behind them before wind was all that was left in their wake. The Queen had said they were gods, and perhaps they were. But they were human, and they were angels, and they were demons. And they were bound. Brother and sister. Darkness and light. Good and evil. Alone they were powerful but corrupted, together they were unstoppable but just.

All he had needed was a chance. Clary as well. A sliver of trust, to become something more.

**Author's Note:**

> I finally watched a finished the Shadowhunters tv show. And honestly? I loved it, just like I loved the books. I liked the tv show's more mature look at things, the establishing relationships, etc. But just like the books I felt like there was something missing with Jonathan and Clary's relationship. I wanted more, and they hinted at it, but never fully expanded upon it. Her complete 180 of opinion of him makes sense given how he had killed Dot and Elliot, but at the same time it doesn't. I hope that makes sense? She gave up on him so quickly, and he never had the opportunity to be human. His father never treated him like one, and Lilith especially didn't. He deserved a chance, to at least try? But that is my opinion, and from that opinion came this. I really loved writing from Jonathan's point of view, and perhaps in the future I will explore more. Just to ease the pain that Jonathan was never loved truly by anyone. And he could have been.


End file.
